Today, in the field of diagnostic imaging, diagnostic scanning apparatuses such as MRI, CT, PET or ultrasound scanners are widely used to generate images of the interior of an object. Typically, medical diagnostic scanners comprise suitable scanning hardware for non-invasively examining the interior of the object with radiation, electromagnetic fields, ultrasound, and the like. A data acquisition system (DAS) is used to convert the data received via the scanning hardware into digital signals that can be further processed. Each scanning apparatus has its own host computer that controls the examination and the data acquisition, and each scanning apparatus uses its own reconstruction unit that reconstructs the resultant data to generate human-readable images of interior regions of the object. In modern scanners the reconstruction unit is a separate computer, for example a high-performance personal computer (PC), which is connected to the host computer and to the DAS via an Ethernet connection.
The reconstruction process is typically a multi-threaded application in which multiple reconstruction processes can take place in parallel. The acquired raw image data is first decomposed into subsets that can be processed independently. Each subset is then processed by an independent reconstruction process after which the processed subsets are recombined into clinical image data and sent to a database for storage. It is already known in the art that this architecture lends itself to speed improvements by utilizing a distributed processing approach (see for example US 2006/0116567 A1). Nevertheless, the process of reconstruction is often still very time consuming, and can last for hours after the data is gathered, depending on factors such as the modality, method of reconstruction, the size of the imaging region, resolution, and selected image quality and filtering, among other factors.
Therefore, it is readily appreciated that there is a need for an improved diagnostic imaging system. It is an object of the invention to provide a diagnostic imaging system that minimizes reconstruction time.